Money Managers’ Positions in Crude
For the week to Apr 30, we saw similar positions adopted by bullish money managers across the two benchmarks, whilst their bearish counterparts took opposing approaches.
Brent futures witnessed a risk-off attitude from prod/merc players, whilst WTI futures saw these players display a risk-on attitude, albeit to a lesser extent. Resultantly, open interest across the two crude grades declined by 77.4mbbls (-1.8%), however, combined net positioning increased by over 14.5mbbls (+3.2%) amongst speculators, indicating their bullishness.
Prices for the Brent and WTI Jul contracts initially rose in the week to $88/bbl and $83/bbl handles, respectively, before both seeing major weakness and declining by Apr 30.
Overall, combined long positions in the crude futures reversed last week’s decline and increased by 15.9mbbls (+2.6% w-o-w). Combined short positions increased but by a smaller amount, rising by only 1.3mbbls (+0.8%).
